SHANGHAI, Sept 13 (AFP) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) opened a regional meeting here Monday calling for greater efforts in fighting potentially pandemic diseases in the region.
"Last year it was Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS); this year it was avian influenza," said Doctor Shigeru Omi, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, said in an opening report that began the five-day meeting in Shanghai.
"We can be virtually certain that zoonotic diseases will continue to emerge. We must be ready for them," Omi warned.
"Disturbingly there are now reports that the H5N1 virus, which has the potential to jump from birds to humans, has now been found in pigs in China, raising fears that they could serve as a 'mixing bowl', making it easier for the virus to mutate and spread to humans."
The virus is proving more difficult to contain completely than we had initially thought," he continued.
"It is still circulating and we have to assume that further instances of the disease in humans are likely."
The WHO again sounded the alarm after a sudden recent return of the dreaded H5N1 avian flu virus in five Asian countries, including China, putting an end to a lull that had lasted for several months.
So far, 28 people are known to have died from bird flu this year, while SARS killed 349 people last year in mainland China and spread to some 30 countries, costing the lives of nearly 800 people worldwide.
But experts worry that the H5N1 virus could mutate to human-to-human transmission, making it far more dangerous than SARS, WHO Director-General, Lee Jong-Wook said during opening remarks.
"As long as the H5N1 virus remains in poultry there can be more human cases, with a high fatality rate," said Lee.
"This virus, if it adapts to efficient human-to-human transmission, could cause a global pandemic of influenza in humans."
WHO representatives from 36 countries will discuss various health threats, including the reoccurrence of SARS and avian influenza, food safety, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, tobacco control, measles and hepatitis B.
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